Sargasso
by sbgrrl
Summary: S5. Florida's like another planet, especially southern Florida. It has myths and legends all its own. Dean hates every last one of them, but he especially hates that because of one he ended up adrift on an empty sea without even a volleyball to talk to.
1. Home is the Sailor

_Hiya! This was written for spn_summergen over on LJ. Cheers!_**  
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**Sargasso  
>Part One<br>**

The absolute stillness was the worst thing Dean Winchester had ever not heard. His shouts had all been swallowed by it, as if the dead air surrounding him devoured echoes for sustenance. He had no concrete way of knowing how long he'd been out there. His watch had gone haywire and pointed to 12:01, his cell a casualty of war. Five minutes or five months, it all felt like salt crusting his skin, drying him up, preserving him like so much human jerky, another meal for the atmosphere to ingest whole. It would happen, eventually. Tomorrow or before the sun rose or Thursday, unless Thursday had already happened. No one could help him. He had already vanished without a trace. No one knew where he was, except Sam.

"Sam."

Dean mustered up a scrap of energy to roll onto his stomach and push himself on all fours. He squinted, for the billionth time, into the hazy, bluish darkness around him. Only the stars provided light, the night moonless and sky spotted with clouds. Night was more oppressing and claustrophobic than day. In the distance, he heard a swish of water, a rare demonstration that he wasn't, in fact, the sole living thing within hundreds of miles. It gave him no comfort, as whatever it was, was probably as predatory as the silence. He never saw anything, but he knew what was there in the deep, waiting to chew on his bones.

"Sam!" he shouted, though he knew the air would absorb his cries before his brother had the chance to hear them. If Sam was even out there. "Sammy!"

His limbs shook at the barest movements, muscles usually so strong and reliable taxed almost beyond their limitations. The slight tang of blood dotted on his lips, cracked open again and, help him, it tasted good. Dean chewed on his lip for a while, savoring the liquid while it lasted. He reached a hand over the side and scooped a handful of water, drank a few sips. The salt of it stung his lips, burned his throat. He had no choice. Drink or be drunk, sink or swim, die or die. He had an urge to laugh and refused to give that sound over to the nothingness too. Laughing would take too much energy, at any rate.

The water felt warm, here. He ran his hand down his face and flopped onto his back. Before, somewhen, they'd been in cold water. The ocean was a cold, cold place. He remembered that, or thought he did, the shock of sharp, icy water stinging against his face, pulling at his arms and legs. His brain melted a bit more each second he was out there alone, so he didn't know if what he remembered was real. If he was right about the water temperature, then he knew he was moving, drifting, or had moved before and gotten stuck. Nevertheless, Dean was convinced he was stuck on a sea of Jell-O. He'd like a bowl of Jell-O. The green kind. He was hungry and alone and going out of his mind.

He had to focus on something besides nothing and food. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen his brother, but not about the slim chances of ever seeing him again. He closed his eyes, tried to quantify the unquantifiable, and when he opened them again it was because the sun shone at the horizon. Dean groaned and shifted and shivered, shook the surprising chill of the dark hours off. Another night gone. Sleep came and went fluidly, without his permission. How many nights had it been, how many days? He peered to the left and right and saw only blue. Blue water, blue sky. Nothing else. Nothing at all. Everything was stagnant, suffocating. He dunked a hand in the sea to make sure it was real. It was, water still warm instead of cold. He wiped his hand dry on his forearm. More salt for the curing process.

His mind, though weary, returned to what he'd been on before he'd fallen unconscious. It wasn't sleep, really, he hadn't had a dream in a long time. He knew for certain only that he'd been there one day and counted back from there. Tried to. Couldn't. Everything was a blur of nothing. So he catalogued tangible things. The growth of his beard, the degree of burns on his exposed skin. If he thought of Sam, it was clearer, easier to keep track, as if picturing the horrified look on Sam's face the last time Dean had seen him, whenever it was, was a good thing.

It had been at least three days, Dean decided after a while. He might have slipped into unconsciousness again. He would call it three days, for his own peace of mind more than anything. Might have been three weeks, but he couldn't think about the random warping of time he was experiencing. _On the third day he rose again_, he thought. Feverishly, he scanned all four sides of his vast prison, looking for Sam walking on water. He snorted his amusement, again with no energy for a laugh and it wasn't funny anyway. Sam was the devil in waiting, or had been, not Jesus. The devil only rose from the dead if a lot of strings were pulled; Jesus had the whole Son of God thing going for him. John Winchester wasn't God, as it turned out. Therefore, Sam would not and could not walk on water.

Dean fumbled in his pocket, took out the only food that had survived with him – a mostly empty bag of Peanut M&M's that he'd only brought along on the hunt because of that old times thing – and sucked some of the melted chocolate from the inside of the bag before it became too liquid in the heat. He carefully folded the bag into a small square and put it away. The sugar gave him a small burst of energy, or he pretended it did while he also pretended he wasn't prolonging the inevitable by trying to stay alive.

Dean didn't believe in fate, yet he was apparently fated to die in the middle of the ocean, alone. The end of the world was coming and he knew he should be there to stop it. The end of the world had already come for him so many times, he couldn't care about this one anymore. Maybe tomorrow, if he was still alive, he'd care about missing his last chance to be a Big Damn Hero. The role was overrated, paid for shit and went without recognition but maybe he could still do it. Maybe he still wanted to, somewhere inside himself. He needed divine intervention from some higher power he didn't believe in. He needed Sam, who he did believe in again after so long of not.

Sam had just started being his annoying little brother again. Déjà vu. It seemed they were always trying to get back to good. Sure, it would never be the same as it once had been. It couldn't. There'd been too much shit piled on, from external forces and from both of them, he had to admit, for it to ever be the way he remembered from childhood. The Winchester good old days had consisted of monsters and demons and pain, making them not so much good as just old. He didn't want to lose his brother again, not now and not ever again. He didn't know if he could take it.

_It all went crossways at once. The sea was calm and then it wasn't. Their equipment, bare bones and as non-technological as they could get these days, ceased functioning on any level just as the sea around them swelled and pitched their boat to and fro like it weighed half a pound. This was a mistake, Dean thought as he tried to find purchase. Something screeched loud above the squall, his trusty handmade EMF detector, then came a sizzling pop and the console of the boat lit up with sparks, doused out a second later by water surging through broken windows. Everything electronic was dead in the water. _

_A grip on his arm, strong. It felt like something cold and dark and inhuman and he tried to shake it off, then realized it wasn't any of those things. Sam, clutching at him with one hand while the other was on a window frame, blood leaking through his fingers. _

"_Hold on, hold on," he shouted so loud to be heard that his throat stung and felt torn. "Sam, you have to hang onto something."_

"_I am! Oh, shit, Dean," Sam yelled back, with a gasp. "We're gonna – "_

_Sam didn't have the chance to finish what he didn't have to say. Dean caught his brother's eye, saw Sam go pale and his face scrunch into an almost comical expression. He didn't know what was going on, not really. Bad juju. The Triangle was going to eat them alive and never spit them out. He knew it. They should never have come out here. He could see that truth in that flash of Sam he got before a forceful wall of water hit them, smacked Dean's head against the hard pilothouse wall, ribcage hit a knob or something. So fast. Out of nowhere. Calm sea, blink, stormy sea. Sam … flew away, water churned around him as if it were a live beast, pulled his hand from Dean's arm, into the worst of it._

_Grayness at the fringes didn't prevent Dean from seeing Sam slam into the wrecked mast of the small fishing boat they'd procured, and disappear into blackness. He opened his mouth to cry out for Sam, for anyone, and it was filled immediately with salt water._

He spluttered and choked, too caught up in the unbidden memory to distinguish it from real time for a few seconds. The taste of salt and bile would never rinse from his mouth, the image of Sam being swallowed by the sea would never be erased. It was sheer luck Dean had found himself floating in the _YachtSea_'s only lifeboat on a sea as smooth as a giant mirror, no evidence there'd been a shipwreck in sight, nothing in sight at all. He didn't remember how he'd gotten there, had no conscious memory of putting himself in the raft, so it had to be luck. Bad luck. He moved his head, shielded his eyes from the early, already hot sun, searched for signs of anything but the nothing that was doing its best to kill him in cruel slow motion. He didn't know why he kept looking for rescue.

Someday before he died, the ship in the distance might be more than a figment of his sunstroked mind.

Yesterday, he'd had four hallucinations that he could recall, and it had taken him till midway through the third to realize he was wasting precious energy by waving at nothing. There'd probably been more visions. He might be in the midst of one now. Dean gave up scanning the horizons and stared at the cloudless sky for a moment, then draped his jacket over one end of the raft, slid under it as far as he could. In the little manmade cave, the choking feeling was worse, but he knew he was only a hair's breadth away from being fried chicken and wouldn't have made it even this long had he not devised this shelter. Deep down, he thought maybe he wasn't ready to die, or to believe Sam was dead either. If he was still alive, then Sam could be. He felt a glimmer of hope at the idea, clung to it and wanted it to last more than an hour.

He drifted, if the raft didn't noticeably do the same, his mind going into a hazy, safe place while the bright nothing closed in on him just as surely as the dark nothing had all night. He was that kid in the movie with the giant white furry flying dragon that Sam (and Dean had liked it all right too, so he hadn't minded) had watched twice a day for a month solid when he was four, only he couldn't stop the nothing. He couldn't stop any of it.

"Mary, your name is Mary," he said anyway and felt stupid a second later, because there was no nameless princess with huge sad eyes here.

He wasn't the best judge, but he didn't think he had started hallucinating that badly, and even if there were a nameless huge-eyed princess floating around, this would not be some kids' movie. Sam was more like that kid until the last couple years, anyway, except that was a lie he told himself because he didn't want to admit he'd always been the pie-in-the-sky guy. No, that was Sam. Always we-can-do-it Sam.

And though Dean could not understand or condone the choices his brother had made in the last year or so, he did know that while Sam ventured into the dark, it was because he thought it the only way to get to the light. Sam had become the nothing instead of fighting it, though, had turned into a stranger who drank demon blood and slept with demons. It … was a lot to forgive. Dean wasn't sure he'd ever completely let Sam off, but he wanted to try. He was trying. Had been.

Despite his recurring thoughts of a wife and a kid and a picket fence, Sam was pretty much all he had and he knew it. Bobby and Cas were there for him, but it wasn't the same. They weren't his baby brother, no matter how much he thought of or depended on them to have his back. Sam was and always would have top billing, even after all that had happened between them. Dean smiled. Now when they were finally getting back to some kind of good this had to … he had to stop thinking about it. There wasn't anything else to think about, out in the middle of a motionless sea.

"_I fucking hate Florida," Dean said. Five minutes across the border and the sweat was already sliding down his face and back. "Have I mentioned that?"_

"_Only about a thousand times," Sam said. _

"_Yeah. Well, expect it four thousand more. Florida is like its own contained, evil universe."_

"_Let me guess – where every guy sports a goatee and has a plan to take over the world."_

"_A goatee, shaved head and too many tribal tattoos." Dean snorted. "You know what I mean. Even the monsters are skankier here. We're gonna be up against something gross and you know it. Fucking Florida."_

"_I guess I'm not up on what makes one monster grosser than another." Sam was poking at him in that deadpan way of his. "Slime?"_

"_Laugh it up. I just don't think at this point we should be wasting our time someplace that puts us so many miles out from decent civilization."_

"_I don't think it's a waste of time to want to help people while we can," Sam said, now as serious as ever. "Besides, we could have flown."_

_Dean wanted to tell Sam to give up the Boy Scout act, but at the same time, he was so damn glad to have that Boy Scout part of his brother back that he held his tongue. Six of one. As far as he was concerned, there was still a lot of work to do trying to trust Sam again and he didn't want to jeopardize the progress he'd made. It wasn't worth it to rock the boat, considering the number of times he's been tipped right out of it. The end of the world was coming and he wanted them to be __**them**__ for it. _

"_Yeah, I know. Saving people, hunting things," Dean said, took his eyes off the road to scan the Floridian wasteland that somehow looked worse than the Georgian wasteland they'd just exited. "The family business."_

"_Old times." _

_Sam sounded wistful, lonesome. Like the kid who'd gone off to Stanford because he didn't want to hunt things, except tempered now by the knowledge he'd never really made that choice; never been out of the life. _

"_Damn straight, old times." Dean flashed Sam a quick grin. "All right. Consider me on board, but let's not make this a two-week deal. We go in, we find and kill the monsters, then we get back to bigger things, as far away from Florida as we can get."_

"_I think this is the right call," Sam said. "We'll be here four days, tops."_

"Four days, tops," Dean muttered in the darkish cocoon of his shelter. "Sammy, when I see you again I'm going to kick your ass."

But then, Dean remembered what he hadn't forgotten, he probably wouldn't see Sam again and he was positive he wouldn't be kicking anyone's ass in the foreseeable, short future. The trace amount of chocolate he'd had for breakfast was coming back to haunt him, or his stomach was trying to eat itself. That made more sense. It already felt like his arms and leg muscles had taken a big hit. Three days didn't seem like much, but under extreme circumstances, the body went into emergency reserve mode, tried to sustain life any way it could, for as long as it could. He curled into a ball, rode out the cramp in his gut. By the end of it, he'd come to a decision. If he was going to die, he didn't want to go out by starvation. Therefore, he wasn't going to starve. Or die. It would be easier to give up, roll himself off the raft into the water. He'd never in his life taken the easy road, by choice or chance. A start was him believing Sam was around for him to kick his ass, eventually.

First things first. Food, then ass kicking. There had to be fish, not just the things that went ominously, sporadically swish in the night. Once, when he'd first found himself in the middle of nowhere, he'd tried to catch food. He was pretty sure he had. Food was very important to him. Yes, he'd thought about it anyway. Dean had to admit he hadn't gone about it the right way, some grain of himself had believed that rescue would come before he _really_ needed to eat raw fish. Delusion had clearly come early. He wondered now, in what might be a brief moment of lucidity, if the Triangle didn't only fuck with electronics. Maybe it got in a person's head, shorted circuits.

"Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take ya," Dean chanted, his voice gruffer than usual, "Bermuda, Bahama, come on … no, no."

Jesus. If his brain were going to start misfiring like that, he would have appreciated a Brian Wilson song instead of that embarrassment The Beach Boys (who he didn't even like) had committed. Bermuda. Bermuda must be close, relatively, though, now that he thought about it. At least there was a reason that crapfest got into his noggin. He should be able to see something. He poked his head out of the shelter and squinted. Saw nothing. Dean became distracted at the thought of bikini-clad beach bunnies on Bermuda anyway, conjuring one that looked just like Mary Ann from _Gilligan's Island_. No. Ginger. No, both. No. What was he doing? He had to find food first, then kick Sam's ass, and then maybe he'd have time for a woman or two in bikinis before stopping the end of the world. No problem.

It was much better to be hopeful than hopeless, or else he was a giant sucker fooling himself into hope when there wasn't any. He wasn't a sucker anymore, couldn't afford the heartache. All he knew was, somehow the nothing was easier to bear if he didn't believe it would get him in the end. Dean knew if he were near Bermuda or Puerto Rico or fucking Florida, he it would help to set something up that would make his little home away from Impala more visible. Frantic arm waving at hallucinations hadn't yielded anything. The problem with that was he had nothing but the clothes on his back, and he needed them to stay on his back to protect him from the sun. If they'd been somewhere that wasn't Florida, he'd have been wearing more layers. He always had layers. They had only expected to be on a three hour tour.

"A three hour tour," he mumbled, losing a bit more of his mind. "The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed."

The bottom half of his shirt would have to do, but he had nothing to hoist it up on. It was getting more difficult to think. It always did, in the afternoons. He slipped his hand overboard, quickly dipped it in for water that didn't do much for clarity of mind. There was nothing to use as a mast. He could tie the cloth to his shoestrings and hope he had enough energy to wave it in the air when there was finally a ship. He would if he caught a fish, he reasoned. The piss poor excuse of a flag would be a backup. He'd use his cell screen to flash out an SOS, though he thought he knew that Morse Code wasn't used by anyone anymore. Didn't matter. He'd flash some ship captain in the eyes, and problem solved.

His stomach made an awful noise, half gurgle and half groan, something he'd never heard before so didn't know what to call it. Right. Food. He found his knife, thankful this was one of his small blessings in this disaster. All he had to do was … stab a fish. Sure. Piece of cake. Oh, cake. Chocolate cherry. Yellow with chocolate frosting. It was good that he was still hungry, right? Right. Hell, he'd take carrot cake.

"_I dunno, it just feels like we're following a lead that's going to end up being a carrot on a stick," Dean said. "Going nowhere but in circles."_

_If he had to be totally truthful, his current attitude had something to do with his hatred for the state of Florida. Not everything, but enough to know he was getting on Sam's nerves by bitching about nearly every aspect of the hunt. Good, served the kid right for dragging him all the way through Florida until they were practically knocking on Cuba's door._

"_You think someone or something lured us down here," Sam said. "Dean, that's farfetched."_

"_You do remember that frigging Lucifer is wandering around the planet … well, the US … as we sit here talking about jellyfish, right? Jellyfish, Sam. Farfetched is something not trying to distract us."_

_Sam gave him the archest of arch looks, expression a cross between a bad Zoolander impression and sucking on a sour citrus fruit. Been a while since Dean had seen it; he'd kind of missed it, but not really. Well, it was too bad if Sam was pissy. After Dean's last conversation with Bobby, it sounded like there was serious shit to handle back in the civilized world. He halfway wondered if Sam was trying to make this into some twisted Winchester vacation and was the one dangling the carrot. A second after he thought it, he knew it couldn't be true. There wasn't anyone more serious about stopping the apocalypse than Sam._

_It had started out as redemption with a side of revenge for his brother, but Dean knew it went beyond that now, was closer to that old do-gooder Sam he had known for so long. In the first month or two after unleashing Lucifer on an unprepared world, they hadn't known for sure what was going to happen. Or, they didn't know how it was going to happen. God or whatever hadn't given them any clues. Their prophesier had up and vanished, and all they had was an angel with clipped wings. The ridiculousness of the ragtag team destined to save the world would never not be funny to him; a mostly useless angel, an old hunter in a wheelchair, an alcoholic and a recovering demon blood addict walked into a bar… Funny sad, not funny haha. Call him a skeptic, but he didn't like their odds. Especially given the fact they were working on non-apocalyptical things. The time for monsters of the week had passed._

_"Yes, I know why we're here. Thousands of jellyfish don't just wash up on beaches for no known natural reason."_

_Dean didn't roll his eyes, but he wanted to. He asked, "You think it could be Biblical?"_

"_I did at first," Sam said, then chewed at the inside of his cheek for a second. "Now I'm not convinced."_

"_It's probably some Florida-bred monster. I think the humidity makes 'em meaner. Hungrier. More jacked up."_

"_I get it, Dean. You don't need to quote the whole list."_

What Dean needed were paddles. Well, food. But paddles would be almost as helpful. They could be clubs or masts for flags or oars to get him moving in any direction. He didn't have paddles. He had a knife and he was going to get something to eat by using it. Until the time came, the shirt flag thing he'd ripped up could wait. He wrapped it around his head, over the tips of his ears to keep them protected. Then he scooted to the edge of the raft and peered over for the first time since day one.

The sea was so calm he could see his reflection. Dean immediately ducked back. He looked like hell. He had probably looked better when he was _in_ Hell. His heart raced. He looked worse than he'd imagined. He braved another look. Cheeks sunken, eyes hollow and sockets also sunken, beard growth was more than it had seemed by touch. The makeshift bandana didn't help, made him seem like a shipwreck survivor. Ha. Taking it all in had him adding another day to his tally and he lost most of the hope he'd gained that Sam was alive out there. Shit, shit, fuck. He forced himself to not look at the ghoul staring up at him, and there were no fish he could see down in the depths.

"One fish, two fish," he muttered. "My kingdom for one lousy fucking fish."

He wished now that he hadn't eaten all the soggy peanuts out of his M&M's bag. Dean doubted fish liked peanuts, but maybe they could've piqued curiosity or something. Too late now. He rubbed at his stomach, hunched over a little. He really didn't know if it was hunger pangs at this point, or a sign of something worse. He wasn't sure there was anything worse. Except sure there was. Apocalypse. That smug bastard Zachariah. Pineapple. Smurfs, and their often forgotten oceanic knockoffs, the Snorks (which he'd hallucinated seeing yesterday and why they made the list). So many very bad things, he could go on for a long time. If worse came to worst, he could eat his boots. They'd been a cow or two once, and now they'd been salted. They'd taste awesome. He leaned closer to the surface of the water.

"Here, fishy, fishy."

The things that went swish in the night were probably sharks. That wasn't the kind of fishy he wanted to see, but he wasn't worried about a shark attack. He wasn't going to trail his limbs over the side of the raft or anything, but there was nothing out there going to get him. It was nothing that was winning the hand, might take the whole game after all. He didn't know what it was about the sun once it hit its zenith and crept in tiny, tiny increments to the western horizon. The heat was worse, everything was worse. Brain melting. As he leaned halfway out of the boat, breathing in air humid and salty, Dean nearly passed out. He clawed backward, hands scrabbled wildly before he flopped on his back and looked into the sky. He felt hot and cold, at the same time and also alternating. The pains in his stomach returned full force, threatened to rip him apart from the inside. He knew what that was like, and he didn't want to feel it now or ever.

He lay gasping like the proverbial fish out of water and told himself that he didn't still grasp the irony of it. Something was happening to his insides, something he recognized and didn't want to allow even though he'd probably feel better once he did. He didn't have a choice. It was when he fumbled at the buttons of his jeans that he realized he didn't have the knife anymore. Oh shit. Shit, heh. More irony. No time to worry about it. He quickly but carefully aimed his ass off the side of the raft and let his body do what it had to do.

When it was over, Dean did feel a little improved. Not much and definitely not better. He shook like a leaf and huddled on his side, clutched his stomach. He didn't ever want to do that again either. He was also reconsidering the dying thing. Spent mentally and physically, he forgot about all the things he had been doing and scrunched himself under the shelter. Just a little rest. Ten minutes, enough time for his body to recover somewhat from the illness.

It was longer than ten minutes. The sun was much closer to setting when he finally woke up, though he estimated another hour or two before darkness came. Dean crawled from his cave, soaked in sweat but he shivered off a chill. Every muscle ached, worse than they had before, anyway, like he'd deteriorated in a matter of hours. Day five was around the corner. By now, he should have seen a ship or something, a real one. Sam would have found him by now if he could. Bobby and Cas too. But he had to hold on just a little while longer, and that meant food.

Then he remembered he had lost the knife to the fish-free abyss surrounding him. He hadn't been exactly sure how he was going to use it anyway, and was grateful he hadn't nicked the raft when he lost it. He had his bootlaces and belt to use instead. It might take some time and Dean didn't like the thought of what fish might do to his fragile digestive system, but he had all the time in the world until he keeled over and died and not eating wasn't an option he could exercise anymore. He'd deal with the shit as it came.

He began fashioning a line and noose with his laces, tricky work because of his fumbling fingers. He chewed on his lower lip in concentration, tasted again the tang of his own blood. Good thing he didn't plan on hooking up with any skanky waitresses on this trip. Dean was well aware what power his lips had over the opposite sex, and right now they were fucked up beyond recognition. They were the least of his worries, really, and actually for the last couple years, that kind of fun had gradually worked its way out of his habits. Random hookups weren't fun anymore. Sam wasn't the only one who'd changed.

Sam. It always came back to his brother. Some things never changed, though for a while Dean had been done with it all. He'd been convinced the only thing he had ever fought for was worthless, his family. His family who wouldn't do for him what he did for them. That wasn't true, and he knew it now. Sam would fight for the world and Sam would fight for him – but only if he was still alive. Dean had wasted too much time being angry with his brother, and now when the world was almost over he regretted it more than anything. His hands shook worse, a physical cue to get his mind on the here and now. He finished the loop, thought it looked pathetic, and then decided to cast it off the left side of the raft. He'd already seen there were no fish on the right. There was logic there, somewhere.

He tossed the bootlace fishing pole into the water, wished he could make it longer. He had started to think the fish were out there but avoided the raft for some reason. Dean edged closer to the left side and stuck his head over to test his theory. There were no fish. But below the surface there was something. Sam. Sam drifted under water. Sam's body. It was pale and bloated and the eyes were gone, seaweed growing out of the sockets. His mouth was open, like he had died screaming. It looked like Sam, but also like something completely foreign.

"Sam," Dean choked out and fell backward. His hand clutched at the laces and his head hit against the raft. He could barely breathe. The nothing surrounding him was worse than ever, but didn't muffle the low-pitched whine he emitted. He should stop that, couldn't. "Oh shit, oh shit, Sammy."

"_These things look straight out of Alien," Dean said. "Maybe we're dealing with real spacemen this time."_

"_I'd say that was farfetched, except you've already explained why nothing is farfetched anymore," Sam said, sounding grouchy._

_Misery loved company, so Dean was kind of glad to not be alone in it. He toed the jellyfish, one of too many to count decorating the deserted, sandy beach. Another reason to hate this hunt – all the bikini-clad women were nowhere to be found. He'd bet the place had cleared out faster than Amity Island at the sight of a shark fin. Sure, a jellyfish couldn't kill you, but no one wanted to have to pee on themselves to stop the pain. He'd actually looked that up and knew it didn't really work. Of course, most people in jellyfish-prone areas knew hot water worked best. He'd looked that up too, which was about the extent of his involvement in this hunt so far. If polled, one out of two Winchesters would rather be in South Dakota. And that was saying something._

"_Well, it's not. We're no closer to figuring out what caused the mass jellyfish kamikaze mission now than we were yesterday. I'd chalk the whole thing up to random freak of nature and be done with it."_

_Truthfully, he was disappointed. If he had to be stuck in Florida, at least they could have found a real hunt with a real monster. A skunk ape would have been a nice one to tell about to the grandkids he was never going to have because, oh, apocalypse. Or maybe they could have encountered a three-hundred-year-old man who'd found the fountain of youth and turned invisible in the swamps and was attacking people for encroaching on his territory. He frowned and tried to remember if that one was real or something from TV. He also suddenly had Three Dog Night's Joy to the World in his head, which he shook to clear. He didn't need that crap._

"_Of course you would. Look, Dean, I get it. You don't want to be here." Sam turned his post demon blood addicted rendition of puppy dog eyes on him. "I just think there's something worse coming down the pike and we can stop it. If you'd help instead of snark at every opportunity, then we could get out of here sooner."_

_Sam was right. Dean hated to admit it, but he was. He had to get his head out of his ass and give his brother some backup. He nodded, tried to look contrite, well aware he probably only looked constipated. That was his only look lately._

They'd never get out sooner. He'd never be able to draw in a full breath again. Sam had been a few feet away all this time, having his eyeballs chewed on by fish Dean was convinced didn't exist. He'd puke his guts out, if he had anything in them to lose. The all-powerful nothing ate his anguish up and belched it back out, so it was all he could hear. Jesus. He'd suspected all along he'd never see Sam alive, but somehow having that proven true was a horrible surprise.

Dean would say he let himself have a few minutes to grieve, but it wasn't let so much as had to. The sun, though weakened by approaching dusk, burned into him through his clothes. Good. What did it matter? He'd been right when he least wanted to be. He knew what he had to do now, and it had nothing to do with saving the world. That was what he should do, but he couldn't make himself care even that little bit he had anymore. He was too tired and he had no pretense left to fight for.

He sat and stared out at the hated blue expanses of sky and sea, mentally told them to fuck off already. He didn't want to waste his hitching breaths on shouting it. If sky and water were actually sentient, they'd be the only witnesses to his death. Half an hour ago, Dean would have refused to let them have the satisfaction. Half an hour ago, knowing that his two biggest enemies would watch him go would have been enough for him to make him change his course of action. Nothing was going to do that. Except one thing. As Dean was about to slide off the raft, he took one last glance at his brother's watery grave.

Sam's corpse was nowhere to be seen. There was only seaweed, rippling slowly, dreamily. It looked like hair.

Jesus, Jesus. The shakes and sweats resurged. Dean fell onto his ass. Hallucination. It had never been real. Sam wasn't dead in the water. Now he didn't know if he was with it enough to know reality from fantasy. It didn't happen that fast. It couldn't. This was real, though, him stuck in the middle of the ocean. He was almost a hundred percent certain on that. He tilted his head back and discovered one cloud in the sky, tinted light orange from the sun setting. He was alive. He was losing it, had lost it already, but he was alive. That he did know with absolute certainty. He'd been to Hell, this wasn't a picnic, but it wasn't Hell either. He wouldn't bet this was Heaven, unless God had as sick a sense of humor as Zachariah.

"Sammy, you better not be dead for real," Dean muttered. "And if you're not, then where the fuck are you?"

Because deep down, Dean also knew Sam would have found him by now if he were alive. Unless his brother was stuck in the exact same situation as he was, the two of them adrift on an empty sea while the world was set to burn. Convenient timing made him pause for a moment, but then his stomach cramped again, reminded him what he should be doing instead of taking a dramatic swan dive into the ocean. He thought he had earned a few minutes to get over his brother's hallucinatory death. He sat for a bit, hand over his eyes, before he found his bootlaces and began trying again. It took a few minutes for him to work up the nerve to throw it overboard. He didn't want another hallucination like the last one, when the last one still felt like ice in his dried up veins.

Sam wasn't down there, looking up at him with empty eyes. It was such a relief, Dean almost sagged back. He couldn't. He had a fish to catch. Only there were no more fish on this side than the other, just an endless underwater prairie of weeds that gently swayed with the current. That must mean he was moving after all. He let his fishing string dangle, avoided looking at _that_ spot and kept his eyes peeled for anything else moving below the surface, the silver glint of fish. He'd taken too long being sick of body and mind. Once the sun went down, that was it for hunting until morning.

It occurred to him, after some indeterminate time and no nibbles on his baitless line, that there was food to be had which didn't require much work on his part. Millions of people ate seaweed voluntarily every day.

_Sam scowled when the waitress brought their food. _

_His brother appeared ready to complain, so Dean kicked his knee under the table and turned his charm-the-pants-off-em smile onto the worn-looking woman serving them to cover Sam's reaction. She didn't respond beyond plonking down his burger and fries, retrieving a ketchup and mustard bottle and plonking them down too. Oh, well, it wasn't like he could charm them all or had any genuine interest in this case. She'd been pretty once, but the woman was thirty-five going on seventy, a hard life clear on her face. Which was beside the point; he just didn't have time for that kind of thing anymore._

"_What was that all about?" Sam asked._

"_You had your bitchface on," Dean said. "Figured I'd save you some spit in your food."_

_The salad had come pre-dressed, while Sam had wanted dressing on the side, prissy eater that he was. The lettuce was wilted and drowning in light ranch, a small wrinkly tomato floating on the surface. Really, if Dean were going to eat that crap, he'd have wanted to send it back too. He hoped one day Sam would man up his salads with beef or something. Of course, he just plain hoped there'd be a one day, not the end of days. _

"_It's inedible, Dean."_

"_Suck it up. Dig a little, I'll bet you'll find some green in there somewhere. You wouldn't have this problem if you ordered real food like I do."_

_Dean had noticed the salad trend, plus extra workouts, had kicked into high gear only once Lucifer was let out. He wasn't a headshrinker, but he wondered about it all the same. It was as if Sam were exerting control where he could. Like recovering boozehounds and meth addicts and whatever all suddenly found Jesus to focus their energy on, only with Sam he'd found a more practical outlet and diversion. In the end, why his brother did the things he did didn't really matter, as long as those things didn't involve buying six-packs of demon blood and having a bender. _

"_Salads are real food," Sam said, in a tone that suggested annoyance but had no heat. "I'd like my arteries to remain unclogged in case we surv-"_

_Danger, Dean Winchester, topic about to get too heavy._

"_Yeah, well," he interrupted, "better to die young and happy than live long in misery. You any closer to deciphering this mystery, Scooby?"_

_Sam shot him a scathing look and played bulldozer with his fork, on the hunt for an elusive piece of dressing-free lettuce. He succeeded at last and ate quickly. _

"_Well, I kind of wonder if it has something to do with the Bermuda Triangle. The jellyfish all drifted from that area," Sam said once his mouth was clear._

_Scientists had debunked the Bermuda Triangle stories long ago. Of course, they didn't know the kinds of things Dean and Sam knew. He was sure there was a hunter in the network who specialized in the Triangle and all its lore. Or, had been at one point. In the past year or so, the hunter network they knew of had declined at nearly the same pace the demons and monsters grew in numbers, which was no small coincidence. The good guys were losing the war._

"_Bobby'll know if we can get with someone here."_

"_Already called him, while you were in the can." Sam put his fork down, salad only a quarter eaten. "Dead end, there. Says the guy retired to Minnesota where the monsters are more normal and the people aren't on crack."_

"_Ha, see? From an expert. Florida sucks."_


	2. Home from the Sea

_Whoops! I thought I posted both parts on Thursday, but it turns out I left for my day trip without. I guess I really wanted to get out of town! Actually, I know I did. Hehe. Reviews, alerts and favs are always a writer's friend, and I thank you for any/all of them. _**  
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**Sargasso  
>Part Two<strong>

Dean slipped a hand into the water, kept his other on the line. What looked like it was just below the surface wasn't. His fingers came nowhere near the seaweed, which now actually kind of looked tasty. He plunged his arm further under and finally grasped the slimy greens, gave an almighty tug and was pleased when some came loose into his grasp. He farmed a bunch of it, pulled seaweed until he had amassed a large pile. For the first time in a long while, Dean felt something positive, a certain amount of pride at his ingenuity, all the more impressive for him being half starved and nearly roasted to death. The stench of the weeds was horrendous, brine and decay and fish. It was this or his boots, he reminded himself. He stared at the gloppy mess on the floor of the raft. Sure, people ate this stuff all the time. He didn't want to be one of them, but he didn't have much choice.

The sun was a huge half circle of deep orange, well on the way to setting. The temperature was dropping fast. Dean shivered and contemplated seaweed. He wondered if it was such a good idea to eat it raw. He didn't know much about sushi or microbiology, but had to think there were little teeny bugs climbing all over it. He didn't need a case of the Aztec Two-Step. Or, rather, didn't need to make it any worse. The water on its own had been bad. His gut ached, remembered pain and actual. No, as hungry as he was, he was lucid enough to know it would do him no good to wolf down his veggie platter right now. Instead, he started laying strips of it out to dry. He had no idea how long it would take to burn the bugs off (or if it would even work), regretted he hadn't come up with the seaweed idea sooner. He honestly didn't remember seeing any of it below the surface before, must have drifted into it at some point. Ocean must be shallowing. Land nearby? He still saw nothing. He hoped the seaweed would cure quickly tomorrow in the hot sun.

He hoped someone would come across him before then. There had to be shipping routes out here.

Dean settled for another lick at the melted chocolate wrapper as his dinner, then took his jacket and put it on. The night would be cold, dark and too quiet. Though he hadn't done anything all day but be sick, he was exhausted. Too exhausted to sleep. During the day, he had other things to occupy his mind. At night. All he could do was think about where Sam was, what had happened. He wished he could turn his brain off now that it seemed to be working all too well.

"_It could be any of them. The impending apocalypse could be stirring things up, things that have long been buried at sea," Sam said._

"_You sound like a textbook," Dean said. "Or a really bad poet."_

"_When'd you start reading poetry … or textbooks?" _

_Point, Sam. Dean ignored his brother's cocky pleased-with-himself smile. He thought about the theory and it was probably close to right. The closest they'd come up with so far, anyway. But there were too many ghosts and disturbances and mysterious happenings in Triangle lore to banish or otherwise kill. Probably more than anyone even knew of, even the diehards and the Bermudans themselves, who undoubtedly had to cover the history every time they encountered some tourist trying to be hilarious. _

"_I can buy that having Lucifer free and mucking around up here might have a ripple effect for all evil things out there," Dean said. "What I don't know is what you think we should do about it. You know how extensive Triangle lore is, and that's just going the public library route."_

_Oddly, Bobby hadn't been much help to them, and their retiree apparently didn't believe in technology of any kind, didn't even have a PO box. No phone, no pool, no pets. Too busy, Bobby had told him, had end of the world big stuff to do, which was a bit of a low blow as far as Dean was concerned. He suspected what that meant was another drinking binge, not that he blamed the guy. He just missed Bobby being Bobby, not some self-pitying drunk. He got now why Sam had turned to demon blood and (Dean gritted his teeth) Ruby, back when Dean had been drowning Hell out with alcohol and denial. Sometimes he wished they had another source. With Bobby, though, it wasn't about the chair to him. There was nothing about being in a wheelchair that made Bobby less intelligent and strong. He wished their old friend could see that. It could be different if it weren't the damned apocalypse. Then again, it might not. He knew better than anyone that the hole inside could be deeper than the Grand Canyon or the Pit itself._

"_I haven't figured that part out yet," Sam admitted. "Maybe you were right about this hunt. It's not like we can exorcise the whole ocean."_

_Castiel had also been AWOL, out of touch by design or accident. Dean didn't know what to make of that guy sometimes, or of his own intrinsic trust. He supposed since the guy had dragged him from Hell, he had earned the trust. Cas would never choose a demon over him, he knew that much. _

_Dean furrowed his eyebrows and looked at Sam, who was almost as earnest as he had been five years ago. Bigger, more solid in every way, but still Sam. He wasn't sure he'd have been able to say that, even right before they came to Florida. That was something, he thought._

"_You know, I've never understood ghosts on the ocean. You'd think the salt content would keep them away." Dean pretended to think hard. "Like how ghosts on TV can walk through walls, but the floor stays solid beneath their feet."_

"_Deep thoughts by Dean Winchester."_

"_Shut it."_

_The TV was on, too quiet to hear well, but sometimes Dean liked the comfort of having other people around, even if they were artificial. It was the local news, because he knew as well as Sam did that newscasters were often a good source of information, only not the information they thought they were delivering. A segment title caught his eye – a picture of a Portuguese Man O' War with a caption reading "In the Belly of the Beast". _

_A tad dramatic considering the beast was a moderately sized jellyfish, but Dean sloughed that off and turned up the volume. Wherein, some cheery, smiling reporter outlined the discovery of an old pocket watch found in the tentacles of one of the thousand dead creatures on the beach. An androgynous-looking folklore professor from a local university, dubiously qualified for the job, announced with more excitement than it deserved the watch belonged to one Captain James T. Pederman, of the Rosalie._

"_Rosalie," Sam muttered._

_Dean was certain they'd explain what it was all about on TV, but he turned his attention to Sam anyway._

"_That's familiar. Here it is – the Rosalie was found adrift in November 1840, abandoned except for some half-starved animals and its cargo. No one ever determined the fate of the crew. Some people believe it was a simple mix-up in ship names with another ship called the Rossini, whose crew never vanished. Most cling to the mystery, blah blah."_

_On the TV, the folklore professor looked ready to have an academic orgasm. _

"_Bet there was no mix-up. Bet we've got ghosts walking around on the ocean floor," Dean said, interested in spite of himself. "We could always go check it out. Rent a boat, do a little deep sea fishin'."_

Sam. Somewhere between having his brain melt and it being compromised by dehydration and starvation he had forgotten this wasn't all Sam's fault. His brother might have gotten them to Florida in the first place, but it was Dean who'd been eager to play ship captain. Part of him had even wanted the chance to say "we're gonna need a bigger boat". With their luck, entering the Bermuda Triangle had been predetermined to be a disaster. For all he knew, it hadn't been a freak storm that had swamped them, but a ghostly armada. All the ships that had vanished under mysterious circumstances come back to life, legions of undead Triangle victims with newfound, Lucifer-inspired reanimation. He didn't want to assign Lucifer that much power, that his mere presence above ground was enough to stir old ghosts long since settled into inactivity by science and progress. So, maybe it had actually been a giant squid, the kind from schlocky made for TV sci-fi movies.

The reek of seaweed was going to keep him awake as much as his brain in its lucid spell would. He wanted nothing more than to sleep through the dark nothing until the light nothing returned, or sleep until there was no more nothing. Dean shifted, tried to find a comfortable position. Such a thing no longer existed. Every inch of his skin itched and burned, felt taut and swollen. He started to think about tiny bugs from the seaweed skittering over and hatching on him, burrowing into his blood and organs. He rubbed his stomach, half to alleviate the itch and half in the hopes some pressure would ease the dull ache. Sleep, he had to sleep if he wanted to survive. Sam would kill him if he died now.

"Sam, come on, please," he said, didn't bother shouting. He'd fed the nothing enough of that, should have knocked that nonsense off sooner than he had. The impulse to shout was still there. Magic psychic powers, a link between them, were more likely to work, though. "Hear me, man."

Someday maybe his voice would become a homing beacon; like someday there'd be a real ship in the distance he could flash an SOS to. Except, what if the ship came at night and he was asleep? Even if he weren't sleeping, he wouldn't be able to use the cell screen or his headgear/flag. Too dark. That would be his luck. He thought maybe every night a ship could have already passed and he hadn't been able to see anything but dim blueblack shadows, hear nothing but ominous swishes at random, infrequent intervals. His cell. His cell had GPS and he could call … yes, he should have tried this first. Days ago. Years.

"Sam," he said into the phone. He must have cued Sam's number, though he didn't even remember picking the cell up. "It would be, you know, awesome if you could come find me now."

No answer. Stony, hurt silence from Sam, who'd obviously grown tired of Dean's unwillingness to forgive and let the past be the past. He was ready now, he wanted to say, but the words stuck in his throat. He was ready to do what it took to save the world. He knew what that was now, and he couldn't do it stuck on a raft in the middle of a jellied, unmoving ocean of nothing. He needed Sam's help, but Sam wouldn't help, because what he had to do was completely crazy. Crazy as Sam saying yes. Better Dean than Sam. That ingrained need of his to protect family surged strong internally, while his body weakened.

And even all that, the apocalypse, the horrible choices they had to make, all of those things Dean had been subconsciously laying at Sam's feet too. And it was Sam's fault, but it wasn't at the same time.

"I'm sorry, Sam, you have to believe me," Dean said. "I can fix it."

Still nothing in response. Fine. If Sam was going to be that way, maybe he'd try Cas instead.

"_Any luck?" _

_Sam approached from the rental kiosk, squinted against the sun._

"_Nah," Dean said. He shoved the phone in his pocket and took out his M&M's for a snack. "He's not picking up."_

_It would have been nice to have a heavenly tour guide with them before they went out to potentially tackle a mass ghost banishment, but Castiel was still not responding to any of his calls, most of them greeted by a voice telling him the user's phone was out of service. That struck Dean as odd, because the closer they got to the grand finale, the closer Cas stuck to them. Yet it was also par for the course, so he didn't know for sure what to think. It was hard to tell what was going on in Cas' head, especially after he started getting more grim and depressed about his failed search for the almightiest of absentee fathers. _

_They didn't need Cas for this. In reality, this first trip out was going to be a fact-finding mission more than anything, but Dean would have liked some idea of what to expect if their theory was right. Blindly traveling out to the approximate latitude and longitude of the Rosalie's presumed disappearance wasn't the best of plans, even if he'd come up with it himself. Something in his gut twisted. Having an angel still capable of fast transport would have come in handy, a failsafe, an easy button._

"_He's still out of range?" At Dean's nod, Sam looked out past the boats, studied the horizon for a moment. "Maybe we should wait."_

"_You already pay off the guy?"_

_Nowhere reputable would rent a boat to people who weren't licensed to drive one, and most in those cases came with some sort of crew. It wasn't likely anything was going to happen, but they couldn't risk civilians on the basis of not likely. Sam had argued, and Dean agreed eventually, that they couldn't just borrow (steal) a boat – that would mean too early or too late a trip. Neither of them was dumb enough to head into the Bermuda Triangle in the middle of the night. The long and the short of it was that they needed a boat in daytime hours with few questions asked and no company. _

"_Yeah. He's looking forward to the day off."_

"_I'll bet. Doofus'd probably sell a kidney if it got him out of work."_

_Doofus was an overfed man a few hard years older than Dean who coordinated rentals for Old Hat Charters. Dean had seen the name of the business and known it was the right place for their needs. His gut didn't often let him down, when he remembered to listen to it. He glanced at his brother, and his stomach didn't twist or turn to ice. _

_"I'm not sure his kidneys would do anyone much good. Not sure they're doing him much good anymore either."_

"_Probably not, but that ain't our problem." Dean slapped Sam on the shoulder. "Come on. We'll try Cas again later. We'll be back in time to go out for a few beers, shoot some pool. For old times' sake."_

"_Old times," Sam said._

_With a smile that made Dean's stomach ache._

Dean pulled the phone away from his ear, slid his finger over the screen to call the light back to life, end his frustrating call with his brother. The phone didn't do what it was supposed to. There was nothing. Blank blackness. Phone was dead. Of course it was, had been dead for days. No signal out here even if it hadn't been dunked into the ocean. Salt crusted the edge of the faceplate. He resisted the urge to chuck the device overboard, feed it to the fishes that weren't there. Wasn't the phone's fault. He should have remembered it was useless until that imaginary ship came for him, and was a little perturbed he hadn't. Coherence was in the mind of the beholder, and if he was the beholder then that could mean anything or nothing.

When it didn't all come back to Sam, it came back to nothing. There wasn't a cloud in the sky tonight, so it was brighter. He took comfort where he could. Dean breathed through the mouth to avoid the worst of the seaweed smell. He stared at the sky, waited for dawn. He rubbed his belly out of habit, pressed his palm flat. He closed his eyes.

"At the rate you're going, you're never going to get out of here," Sam said.

Dean's eyes flew open and he jerked. Sam was there, right there sitting on the edge of the raft, his legs crunched into an uncomfortable looking upside down V. This wasn't real. Couldn't be. Hallucinating. At least Sam was alive in this one. He poked his brother on the left shin, the tip of his finger contacting rough jeans and beneath it, hard bone. Real. Then he pinched himself, felt that too.

"Sammy," Dean said, weak and drained and so damned happy. "Man, it is good to see you."

Sam gave him a half-smile, but otherwise looked disinterested.

"You too." Sam stood. The raft didn't jostle from the redistribution of weight. "Got ourselves into a bit of a jam, didn't we?

"Jam." Dean wanted tea, a drink with jam and bread. With jam, with jam. "You could say that. You have a boat? Coast Guard?"

"Nope," Sam said, "and nope."

Dean frowned. This made perfect sense and no sense. He figured Sam must be pulling his leg.

"Then how are we going to get out of here?"

"Oh, you know how to get out, Dean. It's really very simple. You just have to say the magic word."

"Magic word."

Suddenly there was no ocean, only a room of mostly white. Dean's brain felt like it was on a merry-go-round, and everything around him looked like it was moving even though it was standing still. He was the one moving. But he wasn't. Sam was at the foot of his bed, smiling an inscrutable, familiar smile that wasn't Sam's at all. Dean didn't know whose it was at that moment. He'd remember when he least expected to.

"Baby steps for a baby monkey brain," Sam said. "You'll figure it out, hopefully before you're dead. Meanwhile, I'm starting to think we might have to look more into plan B."

Sam seemed to ponder that for a moment, then turned away. There was a faint swishing sound.

"Wait, figure what out?" Dean said as he lurched to a seated position. "What's plan B?"

The rubber of the raft made a farting noise as he fumbled around, the stink of seaweed turned his stomach. His eyes felt funny, like they'd been sandpapered and put back into his head the wrong way. Sleeping, he'd been asleep. Dean nearly wept when he realized he was still in the middle of the sea, but couldn't have produced tears if he tried. Dream. Hallucination. Call it either thing, it didn't matter. Neither was real. He flopped back, more exhausted than ever, but there would be no more sleep that night.

_Sam stood on the main deck, wind kicking up his hair in unruly tendrils and whipping it about. He had his arms spread on the gunwale railing, face lifted to the sun, eyes closed. Every once in a while he swayed, balance compromised by the choppiness of Dean's steering combined with the roll of the waves, and his head bobbed a little. _

_Something about the pose struck Dean as familiar. Sam was only enjoying the salt air, but he seemed sad and too old. Dean shook his head. What a dumb thing to think. He focused on their course, wishing like hell he'd thought about how they were going to get back if the electronics they had had to keep running went haywire. So far, things had been uneventful. He had expected something when they got deeper into the Triangle, closer to the coordinates Sam had figured for the last known location of the Rosalie. The only thing they got the further out they went was fewer boats to try not to hit. The allure of being ship captain had worn off about three hours ago. It was boring._

_Dean put the boat on autopilot – might as well, it was still working and was another one of the things he insisted on not disconnecting. He'd voted for not disconnecting anything at all – the YachtSea wasn't exactly tricked out – but Sam's conscience had won; he'd said it was better safe than sorry, and why damage someone else's property if they didn't have to. Proof that the boy who would be king was still a goody two shoes underneath it all. Dean didn't have the heart to mock that anymore. _

"_Hey," Dean said as he approached Sam. "DiCaprio, you ready for lunch?" _

_Sam inhaled, opened his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at Dean. "DiCaprio, really? First poetry and fancy book learnin', now you admit to watching Titanic?"_

"_Never seen it." Okay, he had and okay, he might have teared up a little, but he'd only gone to the stupid movie to try to get into Laura Ashton's pants. "You don't have to see something to know something from it, you know. Besides, you understood the reference, so that must mean you've secretly always liked that movie."_

"_Point," Sam said, still grinning. "Neither of us saw it, neither of us like it; we just got assimilated into the pop culture of it."_

"_Borg, nice."_

_Sam tilted his head and looked confused by that comment. _

"_I know I was not the only kid in the room watching Star Trek, so don't play that," Dean grumbled. He grabbed the sack of convenience store sandwiches and chips they'd brought because man could not live on M&M's alone. He snared the turkey BLT and roast beef for himself. It was far from gourmet, but it wasn't like gourmet was their style. He tossed the bag to Sam. "Here, eat. It'll be a long time before we're on solid ground."_

_He was still counting on the beers and a few rounds of pool when they got back. He honestly couldn't remember when he'd last picked up a pool cue. It'd been years. The coming end of the world seemed like a great time to get back to the basics. Even if it would never be the same as it once was didn't mean it had to suck all the way._

Except, of course, his body hadn't agreed with his brain's no sleep policy. Dean woke with his arms splayed out, flat on his back. He swore he could taste chewy, salty bacon from that last sandwich_._ It took him a moment to realize a clump of seaweed had slipped across his mouth. In a flash of adrenalized panic, he clawed it off his face and flung it as far aside as he could, which wasn't far, as he was feeble as he'd ever been. He gagged and shuddered. Gross. He didn't think he was ever going to be able to eat that, dried out and bug-free or not. He had no choice, if he wanted to get out of this alive. He knew it. He wasn't sure if it mattered anymore if he got out alive.

It did, though. He knew that too. He wasn't sure why, only had a sense of something bigger. He shook his head and grappled with the side of the raft in his attempt to sit. Once upright, he performed his morning ritual of washing the sleep away with salt water. He glanced at the seaweed, felt his stomach clench. He grimaced. He was pretty sure his ribs were starting to stick out farther. He felt his right side, thought he could feel more of his bones, though he couldn't say for sure since he didn't spend a lot of time checking his weight, normally. Anyway, this was not a diet he'd recommend.

He remembered, finally, why he had to suck it up and eat something nasty. He wanted as much time as possible on this damned Earth. He wanted, at least, to see his brother one last time. And Bobby. And Cas. His whole world, a three person list. The little guerrilla army ill equipped to fight till the end. Dean had to stay alive, because of them. He'd known that, his addled brain had needed some time, that was all. He'd been out there for … he couldn't remember how long now. But he did remember what the Sam from his weird dream had told him.

"_Oh, you know how to get out, Dean."_

"Magic word," Dean muttered, and thought for a moment about trying a few to see what would happen, then did. "Open sesame. Tubal-Cain. New England clam chowder. Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice."

Nothing happened. Nothing simply _was_, he thought, it didn't happen. Well, it had been worth the shot. Either none of those was the magic word the figment of his imagination had been talking about, or there was no such thing as a magic word. Between those two choices, Dean didn't know which he preferred to believe. He ignored that quandary and let the morning sun warm him up, or tried to. He couldn't shake off the chill this time, his shivers so strong they might have actually turned into convulsions. Each one sapped more of what little energy he had left.

His gut decided it didn't like the briny water he'd forced into it for breakfast, or the increasingly strong seaweed smell. Weak as a newborn, Dean couldn't manage to do more than roll to his side as he puked. It hurt like shit, his throat already dry from disuse and the accumulated days of heat and sun. At the same time, it felt real to puke, and that reassured him. He was still kickin' if he could feel this awful.

"You're not looking so hot," Sam said. "I can't have you dying on me. I still need you."

"Sammy," Dean said, "even in my head you're annoying."

"Here I thought we were finally getting along again. We seem inseparable these days. The two of us against the forces of Heaven and Hell and all that."

Sam towered, shade tree and looming monster at once. He didn't look like Sam. It was a knock off, a Rollex instead of a Rolex. Even after everything, Dean thought he knew Sam better than he knew himself. If this were truly a hallucination, Sam would be the Sam Dean could conjure up. His version of Sam wouldn't ping an alarm or make him think the answer was on the tip of his tongue. Suddenly, amid his pain and delirium, that one thing was as clear as the unending blue sky and sea.

"You're not Sam. Who are you?"

The thing that wasn't Sam shrugged, did not appear surprised to be called out.

"A ghost of your brother, lost to the sea."

"Bullshit."

_There was nothing but blue above and below. No clouds, and only slightly choppiness to the sea. It was intense and peaceful, which he hadn't expected. Out here, the apocalypse didn't seem to matter. Yet somehow the vastness of space and water was also terrifying. In a strange way, Dean felt like he had been swallowed up by it. He couldn't decide if that would be a bad thing at this point in their losing war, to just vanish into the sunset. Keep on sailing. Half a day had gone since they'd seen another boat, its occupants calling him and Sam morons for venturing further out. Little did they know. He and Sam were morons, sure, but somewhere in that moronic nature came something more. Something world-saving. Winchester morons trumped regular morons, every day of the week._

"_Anything yet?" Dean asked. He shifted his feet from the gunwale back to the deck, and stood. "We should be right on top of it."_

"_Nothing, man. Maybe bones drifted or broke apart or something."_

"_Couldn't have gone that far, could they? Wouldn't matter if the pieces got scattered."_

_Dean didn't know much about ocean currents, and wasn't sure regular currents applied to the Triangle anyway. His faith in finding Rosalie's ghost crew was fading with the afternoon sun. The whole Triangle had turned up nothing. Not a single glitch of the boat's electronics or motor. No ominous black clouds appeared and struck them down. The EMF hadn't uttered a squeal, which meant his question had been answered before he asked it. There was nothing out here. Nothing. _

"_I'm not sure it would matter that much. There's supposed to be a lot of paranormal stuff out here, so we should be picking up on something. The odds of not aren't that good."_

"_And yet, witness if you will, nothing."_

"_It doesn't make any sense," Sam said. _

"_I told you this hunt was a bunch of bullshit."_

_It wasn't that big a deal as far as Dean was concerned. They'd return the boat and get the hell out of Florida. The hunt was over if there was nothing to hunt. Simple. _

"_I know you did, Dean." Sam frowned at the sea. "I was just so sure there was something to this."_

"_Hey, maybe there was. No sense beating yourself up about it. For all we know, whatever spook there was had a thing against jellyfish and sent itself into the light after forcing thousands of them to beach themselves. No matter what, we gotta split. We're barely going to make it back before the sun sets, and I for one don't want to be out here puttering around in the dark."_

_Dean shivered. It was like the air chilled suddenly, or was starting to close in on him. Both things were stupid to think, but he checked the sky, looked for that black cloud of doom, found only blue. He started for the helm, ready to turn the YachtSea around. His stomach growled. He almost reached for his stash of chocolate, but decided against it. He had only crossed the threshold of the pilothouse, Sam right behind him, when he noticed a faint burning smell. Something made a popping noise and the boat jolted to the right. _

_It all went crossways at once._

On instinct alone, Dean knew what it was standing there. He understood that it hadn't been a dream before, understood what magic word he was meant to give. If he had the energy, he'd do more than glare. He was incredibly weakened, physically and mentally, and he wasn't the only one there that knew it. Yesterday, or fifteen days ago, he wouldn't have put up much of a fight. Hell, he'd been ready to do it. He knew what the proposition was going to be, starved and almost certainly delirious as he was. Now, though, now he was pissed.

"Would I lie to you?" the thing that wasn't Sam asked, then looked sheepish. "Oh, I guess I would if I were Sam, wouldn't I? Whoops, my cover's blown."

"Shut up," Dean croaked. "I'm not going to buy what you're selling. You should have just come right to the point. Haven't got time for all the friggin' mind games."

Sam's face stared down upon him, eyes hard and jaws clenched; he was angry. Dean didn't care. He lashed his left leg out, too weak for the action to accomplish anything but expend his depleting energy faster. It had to be done. He felt the muscles of his abdomen cramp and spasm, followed quickly by painful twitches in his arms and legs. He was dying. There was a way out, but he would not take it. He wasn't there yet.

"This job was supposed to be easy, but you stupid mules won't budge an inch." It leaned, put its face inches from Dean's. The expression was pure malice. "It'll be your funeral, not mine. The world's gonna burn, Dean, and you had a shot at survival. It takes a special kind of fool to pass that up."

"You think I'm a fool, but you're the idiot who keeps trying the same damn thing over and over. Did you think this was going to work, really?" Dean said, quite a speech for a dead man. "You're not just an idiot, you're an asshole. I'm not joining your team. Ever."

"Even to save your brother? He's dying slowly right now too, just like you are."

Despite knowing the taunt for what it was, Dean's heart started to thump faster at the mention of Sam dying, somehow afloat on the ocean. At the very least, he didn't want either of them to have to go alone.

"That was the first trick you tried, remember? Didn't work then, won't work now." Dean struggled to sit, head spinning at the small change in altitude. "You're not interested in saving Sam. You're interested in killing him. Someone needs remedial classes in the Michael versus Lucifer cage match you want so damn bad. I'm not helping you kill my brother."

It, he, looked over his shoulder, scowled as he turned back to Dean and said, "You Winchesters are the bane of my existence."

Still wearing Sam's face, he spared Dean another icy look, and in a blink was gone. Dean was alone again with the nothing. For the first time, that was actually the better end of the deal. No, no deals. None of that ever again. It had taken longer than it should have to learn that lesson, but it when it was learned, it was learned. He couldn't dwell on what had just gone down, the angelic brute squad coercion attempt. He had to keep on keeping on, which should be easier now he knew about Zachariah's involvement. The guy was an asshole, but he was an asshole whose master plan revolved around Dean and Sam being alive long enough for possession. Good times. So much to live for.

The problem was Dean was still stuck on a raft, with increasingly debilitating muscle spasms in his arms and legs, severe pains in his stomach, overall weakness and hallucinations that would make Timothy Leary proud. The rush of blood was loud in his ears, getting louder even though his blood flow had to be sluggish at best by now. It almost sounded like the ocean, only he knew the actual sound of the ocean was nothing. He leaned heavily on the side of the raft, elbow in some still-slimy seaweed. Even though he knew Zachariah would not, could not let him die, he felt like he was.

All this had been some giant game. Wasn't a game. His eyes crossed and uncrossed and Dean wasn't sure how long he sat there. It was that time warp thing again. The more he thought about it, the more his mind wandered. He stared across the ocean and waited. All he had to do was wait, he was sure. Maybe he wasn't sure, he just didn't know what else to do. There was a faint hum in his ears.

He realized the buzz in his ears wasn't blood whooshing. Or maybe it was, but it turned into a boat, and the boat kept getting bigger and bigger until it was practically on top of him. Dean fumbled for his cell, or the tattered remains of his shirt. Anything. He grabbed a fistful of seaweed and waved it around. There were voices, shouting "hey, man" and "take it easy, fella" and "get him on board" and "watch his head". And hands grabbed at his arms and legs and he couldn't remember if he had pulled his pants up when he'd been sick and it hurt, hurt, oh. It felt real. Didn't know if it was. Two minutes or seven hours ago, he was clear, now everything fogged. Something hard and angular jabbed into his stomach.

_He was on his belly with one hand in a fist beneath him, thumb pressed into his diaphragm. It was uncomfortable and made it difficult to breathe. Hard, roughness against his cheek, the smell of rubber was strong. He shifted, pulled his hand out and moved the other. The surface on either side of him was hot to the touch, and he yanked his hands away instinctively. He put them back a moment later, pushed himself to his hands and knees, head hanging down. Raft. His T-shirt clung to him, damp, but not drenched. His jacket was heavy and waterlogged. For a second, Dean didn't know where he was. He didn't remember what had happened. _

_And then he did. _

Everything was moving. He didn't know how to adjust to the frenetic everything when he'd grown so used to nothing. His head spun. A faint, familiar creaking sound. The smell of motor oil and dirty hair.

_He jerked upward, on his knees still but his arms flew outward. The world did a slow loop and then settled. Dean swore he saw a shape not too far off, but it was indistinct and shadowy. Ghostly. Rosalie, Rosalie. Here there be ghosts. He wondered how many people ended up as ghosts out in the Triangle because of other ghosts. He blinked, and whatever he'd seen was gone. He couldn't be sure it had ever been there. Probably hadn't been. The water was smooth as glass. There was no breeze._

An intense strobe of light hit him as he opened his eyes and shut them again. A wet cloth on his forehead, brightness behind his eyelids. Couldn't open them again. Didn't want to. A gruff voice nearby, he recognized it.

"_Sam! Sammy!"_

_His voice seemed to disappear, as if the endlessness of the ocean swallowed it. He didn't see wreckage. He didn't see his brother, anywhere. Dean moved to the edge of the raft so fast he nearly fell off. The calmness was eerie, unsettling._

Rolling. Smooth, smooth, a sharp sound and his whole body skittered. A deep voice cursed about shitty equipment and funding. He was cold, then he was hot, then he was both. Something on the top of his left hand itched, but he couldn't move. Should have been scared by that, and wasn't. Too tired. All around him was the smell of sickness and medicine.

"_Sam," he said softly. _

_Dean expected no answer, and got none._

Faint beeping, rhythmic and steady. A cool rush of air in his nostrils. Cobwebs on his brain clung and confused him. Dean opened his eyes to white sky. No, ceiling. He knew this place, had seen it before, except he hadn't. The beeping got louder, more insistent. Heart monitor. Dean felt a hand on his arm, fingers callused and warm. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a moan. He felt terrible, sore all over, chewed up and discarded.

"It's okay, boy," Bobby said. "It's all right now."

Bobby, Bobby, it was Bobby.

"Bobby," Dean said.

His throat was so dry and sore, it barely sounded like a word. Something was held against his lips. Straw, he realized. God, even his lips hurt. He sipped at little, enough to wet his throat. Felt so good. He turned toward his friend's voice, saw Bobby but wasn't sure.

"You're really here?" He sounded more human that time.

Bobby looked confused for one moment, and for another kind of horrified and understanding simultaneously. He nodded and rolled his chair a few inches away, popped a wheelie that was probably supposed to be lighthearted, but was heartbreaking instead.

"I am if you are."

Dean squeezed his eyes shut. He'd thought Sam was real once too, but he'd been wrong. He didn't know how to tell for certain now, couldn't jab Bobby from way over here. Didn't matter anyway if Bobby felt solid, he could still be a replication. Plus, the answer he just got was the kind of douchey thing Zachariah might say while pretending to be Bobby.

"Sam?" he asked anyway, because he was a sucker.

"He's right here."

It was Cas this time. Castiel stood on the far side of Sam's bed; he walked around toward him and Bobby.

They'd found him, Dean thought, this was real. There was no way Zachariah would impersonate Castiel. He didn't know if that even made sense, but he knew it was true. Zachariah thought Castiel was beneath him in a different way to how he thought the whole human race was beneath him. Immense relief washed through Dean. He opened his eyes and raised his head up. It must have weighed a metric ton. He managed to hold up his head long to see Sam lying in a bed next to his, looking like fifty different kinds of crap, but _there_. Gravity forced his head back to the pillow. Dean blinked. His eyes felt rubbed raw. Everything did, but he hadn't felt so good in days. Sam was alive, he was alive. For the moment, that was all that mattered.

"He okay?"

"You're both okay. Lookin' a little worse for wear, but you'll be all right," Bobby said.

Dean chanced another look at Sam. Dean didn't have a mirror, but he had to believe he didn't look as bad as Sam did. He definitely didn't have as many machines hooked up to him. Sam looked like he should be in ICU, not in a regular room.

"Sam doesn't look all right. He woken up at all?" Dean asked. He almost didn't notice the glance Bobby and Cas exchanged. "What? Tell me."

"You've been here two days and this is the first you've been coherent," Bobby said. "You've been delirious. Your kidneys were nearly shot. You damn near died."

"I was only able to locate Sam this morning," Cas said, and he frowned. "He was … is not well. I regret that it took so long to find him."

"What do you mean?"

"Damn fools, you got yourselves stuck in the Triangle." Bobby wheeled back, closer to Sam. He adjusted the thin blanket covering Sam's arm. "Best we can figure, you wandered right out into the middle of some sort of supernatural uprising and got caught. You shoulda known better. I tried to tell you."

"Don't need the lecture, Bobby," Dean said. "I know it was stupid better 'n anyone."

Bobby didn't have the decency to look sorry.

"That wasn't what I meant, anyway." Dean's eyelids were getting heavier. "What happened to him?"

"Without food and safe water, well, I believe you know well what happened to him," Cas said. "Somehow or another, you and Sam became separated by a great distance. I fear those extra days it took to find him resulted in his condition being worse than yours."

"Shit."

Somehow separated. Not somehow. Maybe ghosts from the Triangle had gotten them and Zachariah took advantage of the situation. Maybe they hadn't. Maybe it was all Zachariah. Dean didn't much care about the hows at this point, only the sight of his brother hooked up to machines and how he felt himself mattered.

"It was Zachariah." Dean clenched his fists around his blanket and gripped tight. "He gave me a little visit while I was out there. More than one, I think. He's why Sam and I weren't together. He's why you found us when you did, me anyway – couldn't let the vessel die, even though I told him no."

"Zachariah?" Bobby and Cas said.

Looking at Sam, thin and pale despite the sunburn and bandages and beard, Dean was angrier than ever.

"He put us in the middle of the ocean to get me to say yes," Dean said. He coughed, took the water Cas offered. "Who only knows if he did anything to Sam."

They didn't believe him, Dean could see that. Their faces were skeptical from apparently sitting at his bedside for the better part of two days, listening to his delirium work its way out. But he was right. It hadn't been in his head, not all of it.

"Dean," Bobby said. "You sure about all that?"

"Absolutely. It was him. And I'll tell you one thing – the next time I see that son of a bitch, I'm going to kill him." Dean wasn't delirious anymore. He was livid and done with the whole Say Yes to Michael campaign. "I'm going to make sure he doesn't expect it, and I'm going to make sure it hurts."

Dean flicked his attention to Cas, who looked rumpled and grave and, in his own odd way, angry as well.

"I'm going to end Zachariah," Dean said.

It was about the only promise he felt confident giving in this mess that was their lives, the only thing he could for absolute certain control. If nothing else had come from this, there would always be that. Dean knew he was going to make good on his word, and he was going to enjoy it.


End file.
